Foes loom more menacing to men who are physically incapacitated

A new research has found that men overrate their adversary's size and underrate their own, if they are at a disadvantage, like being tied down, in combat.

According to the study conducted by Daniel Fessler and Colin Holbrook from the University of California, LA, participants, who were tied down in a chair, envisioned an angry man in a picture as being taller than when they made the same type of guess, while simply sitting in the chair without being restrained.

In a second test, where they were asked to state their own height based on visual marks on a wall, participants who were impaired significantly under-estimated their own height.

The researchers ruled out effects of anxiety associated with being tied up by repeating the tests on people who stood on a teetering balance board.

Participants, who were incapacitated by standing on this unbalanced surface also, envisioned the angry face as belonging to a taller, more muscular person.

Based on these observations, Fessler concludes that men's experience of their bodies' physical capacities seems to be automatically processed with an eye toward potential conflicts with others.

All the participants in the study were young men, and the researchers state that future studies may extend to include a wider variety of people in other social contexts, as well as pictures of faces depicting emotions other than anger.

The research was published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.